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Open disclosure training for UAE healthcare professionals: the conversation after harm, the DHA duty of candour and sentinel events
Licensed doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and allied health professionals across the UAE, team leaders who support disclosure, and anyone looking back on harm that was not explained to the patient as it should have been.
Structured learning and a written reflection to show insight after a complaint, an investigation or a licensing authority inquiry.
Focused learning on a core standard of practice, with a certificate and reflection for your portfolio.
Most clinicians agree that patients should be told when care has harmed them. Fewer feel ready to lead that conversation, especially with a frightened family, through an interpreter, while an incident review is still under way and a complaint may follow. This course is about doing it well. It explains the duty of candour in the DHA Standards for Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, the open disclosure requirements attached to sentinel events in the DHA standard for sentinel event notification and management, the disclosure process facilities must have under the DOH Incident Reporting and Management Standard, and the federal duties to inform patients in Federal Decree-Law No. (4) of 2016 and its Executive Regulations.
From there it becomes practical. You will decide when disclosure is needed, including for near misses and errors you discover late or that someone else made; plan who leads and who attends; structure the conversation in plain words; work with a professional interpreter and with families who expect to be involved; and write a disclosure note that will make sense to anyone who reads it later. One section deals with a question many UAE clinicians worry about: why a sincere apology and an honest account of the facts are not the same as a Medical Liability Committee finding that a medical error occurred.
The course is for doctors, dentists, nurses, midwives, pharmacists and allied health staff in government and private settings in every emirate. It is particularly relevant if a complaint, facility review or licensing inquiry has questioned how, or whether, you told a patient what happened. The closing section on just culture, staff support, insight and remediation helps you show what you have learned about candour and how your practice has changed, without promising anything about the outcome.
After harm, committees and licensing authorities look closely at what you did next. A delayed, vague or missing explanation to the patient is often read as a lack of insight, and in Dubai candour is an explicit expectation of the code of ethics. This course helps you show that you understand when disclosure was needed, what a good conversation contains, why an apology is not an admission of medical error, and how you have changed the way you prepare, hold and record these conversations.
The certificate records two hours (estimated) on open disclosure and the date you completed them. The reflective account, built from structured prompts and a copy-and-complete template, lets you examine one disclosure that went well or badly and set out a personal plan. Keep identifying details out, and pair the reflection with evidence such as a disclosure note template your team now uses. Take advice from your insurer before responding to a formal complaint or claim.
What you will have at the end
A wrong-dose infusion and a family told only that he was unwell
Consider, for illustration, a nurse and a consultant on a medical ward in a private Dubai hospital. An infusion pump is programmed at ten times the prescribed rate, and the patient becomes unwell before the error is caught. The incident is reported internally. When the family asks why their father was moved to intensive care, they are told only that his condition changed overnight.
Two days later a junior colleague mentions the pump to the family. They feel deceived and complain to the DHA, saying the harm was hidden. The review now has two concerns, not one: the medication error itself, and a failure to disclose that the code of ethics and the sentinel events standard expect. The consultant had worried that saying sorry would be treated as admitting a medical error.
The course addresses each part. Section 3 helps decide what level of disclosure an event needs. Section 4 covers who should lead, when, what to say and how to respond to anger. Section 5 explains who decides whether a medical error occurred and why an apology is not an admission. Section 6 shows how to record the conversation and keep the promise to follow up.
Illustrative example, not a real case.
11 sections · 22 lessons · 2 hours (estimated) · 20-question final assessment
Final assessment
20scenario-based questions
Certificate of completion
A certificate of completion for your learning portfolio.
Completed12 Oct 2026The course includes a structured reflective account template: guided prompts to record what you learned, how you will apply it and how the change will show in your practice. It gives you written evidence of insight after a concern, and a ready record for your CPD portfolio.
Write it in your own words and leave out anything that could identify a patient, a colleague or a case. If you have an open complaint or case, talk to your adviser before reflecting on it in writing.
In Dubai, yes: the DHA Standards for Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct expect professionals to disclose promptly to the patient when harm occurs and to start remedial action. Elsewhere the expectation comes from the federal duty to keep patients informed, the Patient's Rights and Responsibilities Charter and the incident standards of each authority. Section 2 sets this out authority by authority.
No. Whether a medical error occurred is decided by a Medical Liability Committee under Federal Decree-Law No. (4) of 2016, not by what you say at the bedside. The course shows how to express regret and explain known facts without guessing at causes or blaming anyone, and suggests involving your facility and insurer early when a claim seems likely.
As soon as the patient is clinically stable and ready, and usually well before any review is finished. A first conversation can honestly say what is not yet known and when the patient will hear more. The course explains how this fits with sentinel event notification deadlines in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which are separate duties owed to the authority.
Families in the UAE often expect to protect a loved one from bad news. Federal law lets you inform the family where telling the patient directly is not appropriate, yet an adult with capacity generally has a right to information about their own treatment. Lesson 7.1 and Section 4 show how to listen to relatives, check what the patient wants to know and plan the conversation together.
It can help you understand what was expected, reflect honestly on why disclosure did not happen as it should, and set out what you now do differently. The final section covers insight and remediation after a failure of candour. Have your facility, insurer or lawyer review any written statement before it is submitted.
Yes. Dispensing errors, imaging and laboratory mistakes and therapy incidents all raise disclosure questions, and Section 7 looks at how disclosure works in pharmacies, diagnostic services and community settings as well as hospital wards.
Plan on roughly 2 hours, studied at your own pace, followed by a 20-question scenario-based assessment with an 80% pass mark. You receive a certificate showing 2 hours (estimated). Your licensing authority decides how any learning counts towards your CPD or a requirement it has set.
Every legal and regulatory point comes from primary sources: UAE federal health laws, the licensing authorities' codes, standards and policies, and official government guidance. Anything we cannot confirm is left out.
Lessons, scenarios and assessment questions are written by us for each edition separately, then checked for accuracy, teaching quality and fair assessment before publication.
When a code, standard or law changes, the affected courses are reviewed and updated. Reported errors in legal or regulatory facts are corrected first.
Complaint routes in each emirate, the committee process, deadlines, the first 72 hours, building a chronology and writing an honest, structured response.
Records that hold up when someone else reads them: what to write, consent and refusal, labelled late entries, template pitfalls, reports, sick notes, retention and keeping the file intact.
Valid consent, written consent rules, capacity, substitute consent in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, children, emergencies, refusal, special consents and opposite-gender examinations.
